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Treasured family heirloom landed in the trash, reunited with owners, newspaper reports

family bible

A family bible. Workers in Lake Charles uncovered a treasured family Bible while renovating a home. A newspaper story about the find helped to reunite the Bible with the family, The American Press reported.
(Scott Threlkeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Workers renovating an old Lake Charles home dug an interesting find out of the dump last week: a vintage Bible, whose pages were stuffed with family photos and inscribed with the dates of weddings, births, and deaths. In the back, a handwritten family tree.

Lake Charles newspaper, The American Press, first reported on the interesting find on June 24. The paper noted that the Bible's pages contained notes to "Aunt Agnes" and another addressed to "Grandma." Clippings of faded newspaper articles described the feats of a football player for the Kinder Yellow Jackets.

According to the paper, it was claimed by the great-grandson of the Bible's owner, Agnes Odom, who had no idea how the book had ended up so far from the family seat to land in a home on the 700 block of Pine Street in Lake Charles.

Family members recalled memories of Odom to the American Press. "She was kind of a trip," relative Thomas Rodgers said. "My parents like to crab, and I remember going out to Hog Island Gully one time. She grabbed one of the crab lines and felt it was kind of tight, so she started pulling it up. It was probably a 4-foot alligator that was on it, and she decided she was going to take the net and start beating the alligator with it."